Are mutiple parts (volumes) of an article bad for SEO?

[simon_realbuzz]

If i have a lengthy article which I decide to split into two separate articles E.g part 1 and part 2 but I target the same keyword in both articles, is this bad from an SEO point of view?

For example, if I publish an article about 'healthy snacks ideas' and call the first article 'Healthy snack ideas part 1' and the second article 'Healthy snacks ideas part 2' in order to differentiate between them, would these two articles effectively just compete against one another? Is using part 1 and part 2 in article titles bad practice?

Essentially what I am wondering is should you never ever have more than one article that is targetting the same keywords or should I just target slightly different keywords for each article even if they are very closely related?

[AAttias]

I haven't come across it but I don't see why it would be bad for SEO, if anything you should be rewarded because you are making things easy for the user.

Just as long as you follow the usual SEO techniques, i.e. no duplicate content I think you should be fine.

[Matt-Williamson]

I would look at going for one long page if I were you, that way you are not in danger of competing with yourself to rank for keywords. From my own experience I have seen users prefer one long article. I have also found that as one article is more content rich so it has generated more long tail traffic, partly due to the page becoming stronger, as all links that it has gained point at one page rather than being spread between two -  making them stronger in the eyes of the search engines (higher Page Authority for one page article).

Also I have seen where multi-page articles have been put into practice and the second part of the article has been the one that has ranked the highest, not ideal in my opinion.

Here is a recent Q&A that will give you more input as to whether to split your page or not - http://www.seomoz.org/q/determining-when-to-break-a-page-into-multiple-pages

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Personally, I don't like long pages of endless text, tend to be over-faced and move on. I much prefer something broken into bite-size chunks.

However, you can't argue with the masses - I can't imagine reading a camera review on DP Review that is 14 pages long, but then all on one page!

There should be no SEO downside whichever way you go, as long as the article is good.